Edification for Educaton

Humans, by their nature, have always been paradoxical creatures. Only by enduring our tragedies are we able to find happiness. Only by our failures, trial-and-error, are we able to succeed. This irony shows how technology and information of the 21st Century has cultivated to cause an amassed ignorance. This quirk of our mutual humanity should cause no dismay when we come to this realization throughout the most recent generation. And with such abrupt change, we cannot expect to see the same educational system and institution working under the same guise of twenty years ago, let alone sixty. It is important to be teaching our children about our present; we must be empowering youth, not belittling them for the fact they were born into such a new world. It is important to be teaching our children about our past, lest we fall into a world with the caveats described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. It is important to be teaching our children about our future, or rather their future. Without social responsibility, we will too soon forget these exact issues that we need to now fight for.

How to not push away the hope of this generation—and spark a revolution.

Too easy is it to blame the problems of apathy of this generation on themselves. But taking a step back realizes how laughable this is. As stated by Irene Layton in his essay, The Role of the Teacher, the responsibility of teaching is on society. It is not the fault of the student for their distraction from external stimulus, but rather the of the parent. Whether this is blunt or obvious statement, it bears a heavy weight. Perhaps just as obvious, the solution to this is communication and empathy. To discover what empowers and interests the student and work from there.

Prominent for our past is our solace and memory. As prophesied by the likes of English writer Aldous Huxley, we have submitted to the comfort of our socio-political status and stability. This has taken precedence over the vulnerability of confessing our lack of inherent knowledge and fear of the unknown. In the same breath, Huxley predicted our memory of our history as collective has become murky at best. Instead of making the same mistakes as we have in our past, we must allow our youth to make new mistakes. Though this distinction may seem mundane, it makes all the difference.

In order for us to move forward, we must stop moving back. We must begin teaching the social responsibility and vitality of legacy as a means of education. We will inevitably pass, and our students will inevitably pass, too. We cannot expect what we teach to have meaning without also teaching how to teach. How to spread knowledge, to share and explain.

Our present, our past and our future are all vantage points for us to jump off of. You must take a harsh and blunt look into the educational institution itself, as is the central theme in Role of the Teacher. It is not the lacklustre spirit of youth that drives the apathy towards knowledge and thus, education. This introspection shies itself away from public view because to question a single institution causes one to question all institutions. We must review reflect seriously so that we make new mistakes, not old. We must instill the awareness and interest of the future. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.